This is the second of a multi-part series on climate change at different timescales. The first part dealt with drivers on tectonic scales — millions of years. This part deals with the primary drivers of climate change from hundreds of thousands to thousands of years. Future posts will include millennial […]
I’m at the Ecological Society of America meetings this week, so invited grad students Meghan Balk and Catalina Pimiento to write a guest post to coincide with Shark Week. Little did I know that this post would be so timely, with Discovery’s disastrous fake documentary on Megalodon! I hope you enjoy reading about these […]
When you study the climate of the deep past, time is relative. What one scientist may consider a long time — say, a decade — is only a short span of time to someone who routinely thinks in millions of years. Climate change is affected by processes operating at hours, […]
“As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought the wood began to move.” – Messenger, Shakespeare’s Macbeth The simple story of the last 2.5 million years of vegetation response to climate change could be summed up like this: temperature goes up and down, plants […]
Plants have sex. While flowers, cones, and fruits– basically the vaginas and uteruses of the plant world– feature prominently in human cultures, much of the actual, er, act of plant sex is invisible to us. As northerners dig out from under record-breaking snowfalls and eye the ground for the first crocuses and […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 